Canada – our friendly neighbor to the north here in the U.S. (and the homeland of Screen Rant editor Rob Keyes) – is a place where many Hollywood tentpole are shot nowadays. Last year, it housed enormous set pieces from Guillermo del Toro’s sci-fi blockbuster, Pacific Rim; right now, Matt Reeves is photographing certain forest areas, to portray a world in which human civilization has collapsed, for next year’s sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

The Dark Knight trilogy filmmaker Christopher Nolan will be heading to the country to shoot his new flick, Interstellar. Relativity Media is, likewise, planning to set up base camp there, to begin production on the slow-to-develop Stretch Armstrong movie before 2013 draws to a close. Finally, del Toro is going to head back to Canada next year, for production on his next supernatural genre project, Crimson Peak.

Production Weekly has confirmed that Interstellar has begun to prep for principal photography in Montreal this Summer, joining projects like Stretch Armstrong and the Keanu Reeves/Reese Witherspoon sci-fi/romance Passengers. A possible August start date makes sense for Nolan’s mysterious sci-fi film, as it’s scheduled to open in theaters by November 2014 and has already secured a main cast that includes Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Michael Caine.

Stretch Armstrong, by comparison, is a movie – based on the pliable muscle-bound Hasbro figurine toy line – that we haven’t reported on in almost a year, ever since Breck Eisner (Sahara, The Crazies) committed as the director. Taylor Lautner is no longer headlining the film, but the latest production update suggests we’ll find out who his replacement is (too?) soon enough.

Interstellar‘s November release date puts it on a path to achieve box office glory (a la Skyfall last year), but the strong cast and intriguing subject matter – a Nolan story about theoretical astrophysics – have also managed to stoke the flames of discussion about the film’s awards-season prospects. Stretch Armstrong, on the other hand, has less impressive credentials; that includes a script written by Dean Georgaris (Lara Croft: The Cradle of Life, The Manchurian Candidate) and source material that is… questionable, at best.

Crimson Peak – which PW is reporting will begin shooting in Toronto by July 2014 – is, fortunately, in the same boat as Interstellar, since it feature a skilled director in del Toro and cast headed by Emma Stone, Charlie Hunnam, Benedict Cumberbatch and (again) Jessica Chastain, as well as a mysterious story (by del Toro) that features Gothic literature and old-school haunted house sub-genre elements.

The Summer 2014 start date for Crimson Peak is later than a previously-reported early 2014 date; but, then again, it’s not as though del Toro has an overabundance of free time on his hands right now (give the multiple film and TV projects on his plate), so the delayed production start date is quite understandable.

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Stretch Armstrong is scheduled to reach U.S. theaters by April 11th, 2014.